Origin and Etymology of VOIR DIRE
Anglo-French, to speak the truth.
Merriam Webster
There’s been discussion all about, especially following Louis CK’s return to the comedy stage, on the question of whether performers who have committed such acts, sexual assaults and other nonconsensual acts, deserve to have their pasts forgotten, and the right to resume their former careers without much consequence.
This is not a post about that subject.
It is a post sparked by my reaction to that question, as it stirs up something I’ve thought about—or longed for, or longed to know—for decades:
Do I have a right to forget the criminal acts committed against me?
You’d think I would. Whether I could forget or not, you’d think I’d have a right to forget the trespasses committed against me.
Technically, of course I have the “right” to forget, but there are consequences, even decades later, to forgetting the details of events that mostly took place prior to 1990, some of which happened in the 60s and 70s when I was a child.
Much as in the hem-haw cacophony about CK’s performance how the conclusion is that of course CK has a right to try again but there are consequences, I, too, have every right to forget the sex abuse and rapes, the broken ribs and broken teeth, the bite marks on my chest, and the worse experiences I don’t need to get into… And I also have every right to forget how many times I was held up by gun versus how many times I was held up by knife….
Unless, of course, I want to vote AND at the same time not be grilled for hours by both defense and prosecution attorneys every time I go in for jury duty and make it into an actual voir dire session.
They think I’m lying. About nearly everything.
Of course, they think everybody is lying at first, and for just cause: Huge percentages of people try every tactic they can imagine (a limited set, all told) to get out of jury duty.
First They Come For My Deception
So first they enter their phase of believing I’m making things up so I’ll be excused from voir dire. This is understandable because every asshole and their first and third cousins seem to spend their first volley of voir dire questions trying to get out of voir dire. You would be forgiven for believing that `voir dire’ meant, “May I be excused, your honor?”
So I get why they have to dig in. Their distrust makes sense in context, but it’s also painful to be treated like you’re lying about subjects so sensitive, about which you’re never believed, and often actively, willfully `disbelieved,’ and about subjects that ring your internal trauma bell, such as being questioned once again about your role in being a victim so many decades ago.
And we have never yet gotten to the more intimate and violent crimes, for which I have the right to ask to go into sidebar mode…
In which other jurors and the court in general can’t hear, only the attorneys, the judge…. And maybe the defendant? I don’t really know since we never get there before they finally dismiss me.
They always dismiss me eventually.
Once they figure out I’m telling the truth.
If I Were Held Up By Gunpoint I’d Remember
The problem from the court officers’ points of view is that I have been the victim of so many crimes, but I don’t remember the details…. 25 plus years later…. So I’m suspect. It sounds like I’m another fabulist trying to duck jury duty.
“If I were held up by gunpoint I’d remember…..”
--An attorney once said.
“For the rest of your life?”
--I never said in return, although I wish I had.
“Well, not if it happened all the time,”
--I actually said, which was probably a better answer anyway.
The truth is that, no: Sometimes criminal acts become banal, at least in memory, and become a series of dull, unfortunate events.
Here’s part of the litany of crimes that I must report when asked in these proceedings. I have an obligation to report them.
*Takes deep breath.* I’ve been robbed either on the street or in my former career as a retail worker and 24-hour convenience store manager about 10 times, my apartments have been broken into and nearly everything stolen multiple times, I’ve been assaulted or beaten numerous times as a juvenile and young adult, I was in a crowd when shots were fired into it (and a bullet landed in the wall a foot away from where my head was when it began/nobody was hit as it was to warn people to back off), and beyond that there were sex crimes through the years until age 19, and at 19 and 20 I was stalked in a domestic violence situation which resulted in the broken ribs, teeth, lacerated face, lacerated eye, and bites to my body, oh, and a decade later I was threatened by neo-Nazis, and then randomly punched on a bus one night. Or was it random!!!!????? Dun-dun-dun-dun!
None of which I can explain.
And they expect me to explain.
I have a lot to remember about things I long, even ache, to forget, and every time I think that maybe this time I’ll forget again, I get a jury summons, and they just keep sucking me back in.
What Did You Do To Deserve This?
The most insulting question I remember was:
“What did you do to make yourself the victim of so many crimes?”
--Defense Attorney (Cough, asshole, cough)
(This may have been “put yourself in the position to be the victim of so many crimes,” or close to that. He may have asked it in two ways. I don’t have an exact transcript, though, only my memory, and my memory of my memory, and my memory of my memory after that.)
The judge stopped me from answering that particular question and tut-tutted that particular attorney, but stopping an attorney from asking one question doesn’t stop them from trying to get an answer any more than obstructing one line of ants stops that colony from trying to get at a food source. They keep coming back, no matter how many of their little units die along the way. Be they ants, or questions, persistence wins.
The Answer To His Question, To Life, The Universe, and Everything
By the way, the answer to that question is simple. I’m the slowest antelope due to disability AND I’m queer, so I had to “get out of here” at a young age, so I was on the street and vulnerable, and when combined with my later glamorous convenience store career, I was randomly selected to be in the way of too many criminals who happened to see what easy pickings I would be and Occam Razored their ways my way. But you can’t exactly think of all that let alone say it in court.
And I shouldn’t have to explain why I was the victim of so many crimes.
What I wish I had the right to do is forget it all. To wipe it all from my mind, and never have to worry about being asked about it again. But I know, I know. I do not have that right.
Rehearsal For Hypervigilance
Around a decade to twelve years ago, this particular voir dire I’m quoting derailed my psyche.
It was a grueling two day event in which they kept coming back to me—the defense attorney and the prosecutor—back to me, back to me, the first afternoon, then it was home, telling work I won’t be in tomorrow, and back the next morning, coming back to me, back to me, back to me, a thousand little ant-questions biting me, biting me, then it was lunch in the dreary little commissary, reading some book, waiting to return, then after lunch another hour of them coming back to me, back to me, the prosecutor and the defense attorney, several times each, and then finally they consulted, and…..
They dismissed me.
The whole time they’re trying to get me agitated. But I kept my…. Okay, no. They broke me. A thousand times, they broke me.
For real, and in some lasting ways: They broke me open for years to come, like breaking some internal dam. This one episode set in motion new rounds of post-traumatic reaction patterns. Decades-old traumas returned as if they were happening today, and has overtaken my life for months at a time in many of the years since.
Every time I get a jury summons in the mail it starts.
I begin 3 months of severe episodes related to PTSD, with hypervigilance, insomnia, and I involuntarily rehearse my answers to those past attorneys over and over so I make sure I remember as many details as I can so I don’t have to feel the way I did in that courtroom that day, won’t have to be caught off-guard, for my Truth to be found lacking authenticity. This is my big day in court!
This pre-trial selection period is a period of psychological deterioration for me, and a frozen time, a time when everything is put on hold until “after I make it through.”
This is a period of hell for me. I am passing through circles the whole time.
I long to forget these events. It’s like having to retouch a fire, over and over again, so as to be tougher when I face the real fire, when I’m called again…..
To Speak The Truth.
Acceptance Is Easier When The Sacrifices Are Equal
Do I have a right to forget the trespasses perpetrated against me? The answer is yes, but with consequences.
And I accept that.
We have to, for life is life. We’re growing in this spot and we can’t move away from the wounds in our stems. So yes, I accept that I must remember these crimes in order to perform well in these hazardous voir dire examinations. So be it.
(For complicated reasons, primarily involving medical privacy issues, I have not pursued formally excusing myself from the jury process. I’m not sure I would qualify, and it would necessitate far greater exposure than is worth it.)
But maybe journalists, et al, could ask this question: Are there people who stop voting because they don’t want to go through this shit? (You may wish to alter the wording.) That’s a story worthy of pursuing.
How about a story that informs me (and a me in every state and territory) about the process for being excused from all future jury duty due to psychiatric or…..? And what are the consequences of going down that route (time and expenses, privacy and exposure) to these former victims of crimes should they go this route?
See, I don’t know the answers, but I’m a part of your readership, journalists.
I am a human…. When you write for me, do I not read!?
Is our strength facing these probing questions in voir dires at least worthy of a footnote notation in this all-important conversation we’re having about THEM?
Just…. Ask…. Some of us.
Ask people these questions just 3% of the time (and 3% of the questions, if you absolutely must) that you devote to questions pertaining to the rights of perps to reach a point in their lives when they’re free of consequences for their acts. Definitely still talk about them! Wouldn’t want to censor!
Just stop censoring victims by never seeking them out to ask them whether they ever ever have the right to forget the trespasses once perpetrated against them, too.
Don’t Take The Superb Assholery So Personally
When they demand I account for three-decade-old memory lapses… Memories I no longer want to have at all…. When they imply I’m lying…. It raises my ire…. That’s partly their point in voir dire, to stir up as much shit they can in potential jurors so they can ascertain whether they want them on their jury.
I understand the process, and the purpose of the superb assholery. I’m not taking it personally… But when they imply I’m lying, when they pry me to explain why I was the victim of so many crimes, when they ask me about my reactions to this robbery versus that robbery versus….
And all the while I know we may have to move on to that sidebar that so far I’m blessed to have always been dismissed before it came. All the while wondering how I’m going to explain how I let someone break my ribs, or how I provoked…..
So these days, when I receive a summons, for months before going into jury duty I ready myself for a return to that day, rehearsing my answers, to keep myself from having a room full of strangers staring at me, wondering why I don’t recall everything just right, wondering if I’m telling the truth.
My PTSD has reaccumulated around that day (and a few others in my life), now.
Here’s an ironic twist: I have no terrible memories of court from my own cases, but I do now from a voir dire process.
I only testified in court as a victim/witness once, as a juvenile in an assault and battery case (adult court, adult offender). Later I was in a victim witness program, but not the concealed identity protection type of program you know from television. They were preparing me for trial and they were someone I could speak with. However, I continued to receive threats from jail, and when he was released on bail, he was back breaking in, nearly burned my apartment building down….
I had to leave the state. I was unable to afford to return for trial, and thus the case was dropped. And I kept myself as hidden as possible in the public records for years.
But today, that day in voir dire is the seat of my core worries and traumas. Whereas the original perpetrators long ago lost (most of) their power to trigger me (much), that day prodded and poked and agitated me in the years that followed, and consequently, the day itself has become the threat to me, that thing that gets my amygdala whirring, and has thus accumulated all the trauma around it in my mind.
Remembering the past makes you remember the past even more.
Having to remember the past in highly detailed and acceptable fashion or else face top-notch but brutal cross-examination and a room full of public scrutiny every few years sucks even more.
So, yes, in conclusion: I really feel for comedians who wanna get their groove back.
That’s definitely tonight’s top story.
Journalists, Pundits, Comedians, Celebrities, Twitter-Pundits To Speak The TruthChallenge!
For every story (et al) you write about Perpetrators Navels, pick one topic mentioned here-in, interrogate the fuck out of it, go as deeply as you did CK’s revival moves or other of the MeToo Hall of Infamy winners and, with their permission, gaze into the Navels of a few Victims. Please.
A story or ten thousand and two would do.
What options are available for people like me in your state?
What are the rules and protocols of sidebars?
What are the rules for voting rights and jury duty responsibilities? Explicate the constitutional roots and interrogate these rattled branches I report? Explain it all to me, Vox’s Explained series!
There are thousands of story ideas every bit as important as whether Kevin Spacey gets to play King Lear someday or not, is all I’m saying.
So ALONGSIDE ALL THAT, could we just expand the discussion a wee bit?
Just nudge the Overton window even 3% in our direction? Just so long as we’re gazing at navels?
Navel Gazing All The Same Old Navels
So, do I care about Louie CK’s right to have his past forgotten so he can perform jokes about rape whistles in peace?
I’ll leave that question to the hundreds of thousands of journalists, pundits, comedians, celebrities, and twitter-pundits already addressing these important questions. I feel the question is in good hands already.
Hundreds of thousands of good hands.
You know what would be really great, though? I mean, if I could click my heels together to get back to Kansas and really live that dream?
I would love to see 3% of the hundreds of thousands of journalists, pundits, comedians, celebrities, and twitter-pundits set their professional skills toward my question up there above the fold, or others they may encounter once they go out, meet former victims of myriad crimes, ask them about the ongoing day to day consequences, even decades later, just for having been the victim of a crime, and ask them if they can ever forget, or be allowed to forget. Please, please, pretty please. We’ll even smile just this once, but please, please pretty please.
Go ask Alice these questions. She’s been down the rabbit hole waiting all this time.
Keep on analyzing the navels of those who shook their Ids around publicly without consent, of course. Nobody’s asking the media to stop picking that lint!
However, there’s more to the story.
There are so many consequences that ripple through my life all these decades later, but where are those stories? Where are those probing think pieces? Where is the concern trolling for our feelings, for our rights to move on, get past, get beyond, with or without justice?
Some of those ripples set in motion never settle or smooth out again and people’s lives are forever changed.
Some people hide forever, either from the infamy of their humiliation, or from the son-of-a-bitches who did this thing to them, who are still out there, their threats forever in the air, their egos buoyed by the navel-gazing consideration of America’s punditry, their navel-lint validated, their right to move on considered vital as a topic of conversation.
While their victims must account for their where-abouts and their what-abouts and their when-abouts and gotchas forever, popping up in unexpected places, like voir dire, or coffee with a new friend when you accidentally Speak a little Too Much Truth. We must live in the quicksand of constant doubt; meanwhile reading countless probing stories and concerned tweets about whether THEY get to climb around way up there on top of the monkey bars again or not.
Well, do THEY?
It seems unjust they have to worry about all this while they’re up there playing on their monkey bars…. Oh, crap, the quicksand’s up to my mouth now…
Journalists, ask former victims of crimes if, compared to our own continuing threat of compelled exposure, they’d give a fuck whether somebody who masturbated in front of people over whom he had power will ever (whine) have the right (whine) to play around up on top of the monkey bars again while they’re drowning in quicksand.
Go ask Alice. I think she’ll know.
Grace Slick “White Rabbit”
Journalists who cover the courts, will you cover this, too? Just 3% of you would do. After all, all it took to change the heart of the Grinch was the sweet gentle generosity of one Cindy Lou Who. You can do that, too, with one story, and then one story more, you, or you, or you….
I’m not saying don’t discuss that other issue at all…. Follow me here…. I’m asking that you don’t don’t discuss equivalent impacts on victims any longer.